Closing the Action Gap in an AI driven world
In this article
A colleague recently wrote about what she called the Action Gap — that blurry space between a great conversation and meaningful follow-up.
It struck a chord. Despite all our modern workplace tools that we have available in our fast moving organizations — Jira, Asana, Webex, PowerPoint, Confluence and most recently, AI tools that do all sorts of things for us — we still often struggle to turn discussion into decisions, and decisions into delivery.
And if I’m honest, I was wondered the same thing as my colleague: Does anyone actually read those AI transcribed meetings notes anyway?
Someone recently thanked me for capturing our meeting’s key ideas by hand — rather than mindlessly dumping an AI generated summary into an overloaded chat thread and hoping the people that needed to read it would pick it up. That small moment reminded me that clarity and brevity still matters.
How I’ve adapted in our 'chaotic adhocracy'
Over time, I’ve simplified how I manage actions and decisions:
One source of truth: The final version of information is considered to be a Confluence wiki - because it's online, real-time and collaborative. Everything else - email, chat, documents, is considered out of date as soon as it is written.
Actions = checkboxes + owner tags: Visibility drives accountability.
Decisions logged properly: Using the Confluence “decisions” feature stops us from re-debating old issues.
Reusable, themed templates: Different meetings need a different focus — architecture vs. planning, for instance.
Use AI, but cautiously: AI generated text is now quite familiar, and it's stilted, choppy style is also nearly universally hated. People can still tell human generated content, and hopefully (for now) still value it.
These small communications choices create predictability in an unpredictable environment.
But even with structure and care in your communication, the real challenge isn’t just creating action. It’s getting attention.
From Action Gap to Attention Gap
I’ve started calling this the Attention Gap — the space where people are so overloaded by tools, chats, and Ai produced content to review that they no longer know what needs their focus.
That’s where project management itself is evolving. The “old school” PMI-style project management I was trained in twenty five years ago — with Gantt charts, stage gates, and earned value metrics — feels increasingly out of step with today’s dynamic, AI-driven, cross-functional world.
Our role isn’t just to organize work anymore. It’s to direct attention — to help teams focus where it matters most, and increasingly, where human decision making is still a value add.
AI as an attention amplifier
Here’s what I’ve been experimenting with:
Writing AI-assisted 100-word summaries that people actually read.
Putting information where their attention already is, not where I wish it were.
Dropping micro-process hints across channels — using AI to tune tone and timing for maximum effect.
Because the bridge between talking about work and doing the work isn’t built with more process or more AI — it’s built with better attention management.
The next evolution of project management may not be about managing tasks at all — but managing collective attention flow.
What about you?
How are you managing attention across your teams? Are your AI tools helping — or adding to the noise?
I’d love to hear how others are tackling the Action Gap in today’s AI-enabled, fast-moving organizations.
